may days.

It's too late for me to be starting a blog. After weeks of busyness and graduation madness, though, I will leap into the opportunity to make space for words.

I can hardly believe that this month is coming to a close. So much has taken place in the last six weeks, and yet time doesn't stop to feel the weight of change. Time tumbles always forward, sometimes with the quietest of movements and sometimes not the least bit silent. She will not leave me in her wake to wonder at the state of days that are over, but she keeps me in the very middle of her path and stays always on my heels. It is in this manner that I have come to find myself a high school graduate, college bound, and staring at the small calendar space between now and when I move out of my home.



But we have spoken of these things before.

What's on my mind? Kings of Convenience plays softly and sadly from the speakers on my laptop, filling up the space around me with nostalgia and remembering. Looking back through pictures my photographer mother has taken throughout the last few years, I am struck by simple things. Like how my brother used to be shorter than me, and how my hair used to be long. Like the way I felt when the picture was taken, or the look in someone's eyes. So much is not the same.

There is one photograph in particular that stands apart. The subject matter (my eye and nose in profile) is not what matters (no pun intended). It's the moment in time that is represented in the image. The picture itself is lovely; there is a bright azalea flower behind my ear and my eye is nearly turquoise in the light of the window behind me. But I see something else. I remember the shadow that clung to me, to my family, and to our home for all too long. Many of you know the story. When my mom miscarried in October of 2005, her emotional and physical health spiraled dizzyingly downward. Days of sadness turned into months of unrest; we were all staggering in the aftermath of tragedy and the everpresent tension of pain. This picture, taken nearly a year after the original loss took place, is colored by so many shades of hurt because I know the definition of the look in my eyes. I was sad, low on hope, and angry at so many things. My inner world was at war.

Now, looking back into my own sad face from two years later, the feeling is bittersweet. Because, although I can feel the ache of what was happening then, there is a stronger sense of something triumphant and new. I walked through the shadow, but I did not set up camp there. Life now is so vivid and bright and possible, open ended and beautiful like empty, blank pages. Time still urges us forward.

What comes next?

My friend Eliesa would say that this is a season of beginnings and endings. An end to highschool is the beginning of college. An end to being 17 is the beginning of being able to sign for my own library card. Change is what happens when you're trying to figure out how to cope. Change happens whether you're ready or not.

Anyway. Enough contemplative musing.

Let's talk about this.



This is me and my boyfriend Samuel. My mother has captured trillions of images of us in the course of our dating experience, but this is one of my absolute favorites. Yes, we are as happy as we look.

Why am I bringing this up?

I felt it was appropriate, in a blog focusing on life change and new things, to mention that June 1st will mark SamAnnie's one year point of existence. A year of goofing off in public places, holding hands in traffic, going to the maximum number of homecomings and proms available to us, and learning how to talk about hard things, even when the timing is inconvenient. I can say with full honesty that I could never have expected how deeply this kind of relationship would affect my life. It's all the good solidity and sweetness of a best friendship, startlingly intermixed with all these other feelings that are much newer and stranger and harder to understand. Butterflies, yes. But also, trust. A scarier, different-er kind of trust that takes a long time to grow. But one that is, in my humble opinion, well worth the wait.

And speaking of waiting.
I wish that boy would come home from Italy already. I feel like he died or something. His vacationing on other continents has left me feeling altogether boyfriendless, what with the complete and total lack of any communication whatsoever. All I can say is they better have some pretty jammin' postcards in Rome, and they better be coming my way.

That, and he comes home Sunday. I'm counting down the days.


Anyway. That's all for now.


More soon.

professor.

So, I am sitting here, in my beautiful bed, with my beautiful birthday-present MacBook computer in my lap, feeling my body's relief at finally getting to sink down in between my sheets. Behind my head is a plethora of pillowy objects, one of which looks much like the critter in the picture you see here, and goes by the name of Professor. He was a Christmas present, and is currently my favorite bed-buddy since Lambie of my younger years.

Professor has been with me to many a sleepover, been my comfort on less-than-comfortable car rides, and even flew with me faithfully to Guatemala and back, all in the short space of time since Christmas 2007. But more than all of this, Professor is an easy transition into being able to talk about what's really on my mind:



College.

And no, not just because his name is "Professor," although that helps.

To me, Professor turns my mind in the Oglethorpe direction for a few reasons. One is because, for some reason, I am inordinately excited about bringing my incredible good-looking bed to dorm life. For those that have not seen it, you will have to believe me when I say that my bed is awesome. In addition to my apple red flannel sheets, apple red uber-soft blanket, and Professor's furry face, I managed to wrangle up an authentic every-color-in-the-rainbow Mexican blanket to be the icing on the cake. At the end of the bed, I keep one turquoise and one lime green blanket folded on top of each other, because I tend to freeze easily. On the other side, I pile up two or three brightly colored pillows on top of my red one. If it sounds overwhelming, that might be a little bit true. But really it's just perfect, and the only other bed ensemble that comes close to winning my heart as much would be Stephanie's cowboy sheets. Those are pretty sweet.

The second reason for my college-bound mindset tonight is that I can look at Professor, sitting on my dorm-bed-to-be, and my heart will go in several directions at once. Simultaneously, I feel like a very small person who wants to sit in bed and hug her stuffed animal for a very long time, and like a very excited person whose eyes are filled with the sun on the horizon of her life. Almost as soon as I had made the firm decision to send in all my forms to Oglethorpe, the forms that all say things like "definitely, for sure, I'll go to this school," I was overwhelmed with both of these feelings in turn. I sent each form off with a slightly trembling hand, realizing more and more that I really would only have months left to live as young as I am. Not so much that I will be all of a sudden very grown up the moment I step over the OgleThreshold; not that at all. I just suddenly understood that I only have a few more months left of the way things are, and then it will all change. I'll step into a world where "going home" only happens on the weekends, and not at the end of each day. My family will be 45 minutes away instead of playing songs and making food on the floor below me. My room will be emptied of what matters to me most and I will have to decide all the books I want to take from my shelves.

New. Different. Alarming.

We are, of course, still waiting on verification of financial aid stuff to all come through and whatnot. And it's like my heart can't believe until we are cleared through every last detail. But if I tell myself the truth, I've been given the "YES!" signal all the way down the board. I'm just afraid to believe that for sure, and afraid of what it means if I do believe it.

Change.

Anyway, the other half of me is still rejoicing, though. I'm like, picking out room mates. Yep.


Other than this, I have many things to think on and write out. But it is late enough that I feel it would be in the better interest of the general public for me to end at this time.

I will quickly mention: I turned eighteen. I had a party. It was outstanding.

My parents gave me a future in college by giving me the only thing I would have asked for but also the thing I did NOT expect:



BEHOLD: MacBook. I am still a little overwhelmed when I think about it. Oh, the papers I will write on these keys.

Annnd, Julisa gave me a running ensemble. Sweet. She loves me. :)

Ellie gave me my life manuscript. Every blog I've written since 2004, all printed neatly, creatively bound, and beautifully organized, wrapped in a box and staring me in the face saying "someone loves you, someone loves you, someone really, really loves you."

I was...more than a little shocked. Thank you, Ellabell. I don't know if I will ever be able to give you anything to measure up.


And, there is more. There is always more. Mi novio gave me a typewriter, which I am tempted to write on every time I walk near it in my room. If I let myself continue, I will not sleep.

So, sweet dreams world. More soon.